Economics blog

This blog contains information on the postal sector and the broader economy. It includes NALC Research blog posts and links to posts created by other organizations that may be useful to letter carriers in their advocacy efforts.

USPS just announced that parcel volume is expected to increase by 10 percent compared with the same holiday period last year. Letter carriers have played an integral role in delivering parcels in the United States since the early 1900s.

BLS’s employment projections for 2016-2026 expects employment to increase by 11.5 million over the next decade. Most of this new growth in jobs likely will come from the health care industries and their associated occupations.

While the media’s portrayal of new numbers from the Census Bureau has been very upbeat, the last couple of years of income growth is not nearly enough to counteract the income losses suffered by most Americans during the Great Recession.

The Economic Policy Institute has a great employment statistics website called The State of Working America Data Library, which contains information that may be of interest to letter carriers who are looking at economic trends.

What if your credit card company told you: “You will charge a million dollars on your credit card during your life; please enclose the million dollars in your next bill payment. It’s the responsible thing to do.” The U.S. Postal Service’s Office of the Inspector General says that’s what USPS’ requirement to pre-fund its long-term pension and healthcare liabilities is like.

Letter carriers may be hearing this week about something called Trade Promotion Authority, also known as “Fast Track.” It may be the most important issue for America’s unions in the first months of the new Congress.

On average, the Postal Service delivers around 11 million packages per day to homes across the United States. This is nearly double the amount of home deliveries made by UPS and almost six times the home deliveries made by FedEx.

Last year, the Postal Service forecast that First-Class Mail volume and revenue would decline. However, in 2014, volume actually declined by only about half of the Postal Service’s forecast and revenue rose by nearly 1 percent.

Some people would have you believe that the Postal Service continues to incur net losses because people don’t use letter mail anymore. However, a look at the 2014 Postal Service performance data doesn’t back that argument.

In the third quarter of this year, the Postal Service decided to change the name of a key line in its quarterly results slide presentation. It changed the name of a line that was previously called “Operating Income/(Loss)” to “Controllable Income/(Loss).”

Recently, a good question came up at the NALC Leadership Academy about where to find data on the Postal Service. For those who are interested, a lot of information can be found on the websites of these organizations.

In mid-November the Postal Service will announce its full-year Fiscal 2014 financial results. At of the end of August 2014, it had a $1.3 billion operating profit, so the 2014 full-year operating results are on track to be very good.

The PRC just posted the Postal Service’s monthly results for August 2014, and the year to date results through August. This is the last results report we will see before the Postal Service announces their full-year results around mid-November.